Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced the arrest of “223 illegal aliens on Indiana highways near the Illinois state line.”

The arrests included 146 truck drivers.

“223 illegal aliens have been arrested and taken off of our roads. Of those, 146 of them were drivers. That includes 46 semi-truck drivers and another 82 of them that were either box trucks, buses, moving vans, vehicles such as that,” Noem said.

“The CDLs that were issued to those individuals were issued from over a dozen different states,” she continued.

“Overwhelmingly, these individuals have come from sanctuary states,” she added.

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“The top three states issuing the CDLs were Illinois, California, and New York,” DHS stated.

Watch Noem’s announcement below:

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The arrests were part of Operation Midway Blitz, a Trump administration initiative launched last month in honor of Katie Abraham, who was killed in a drunk driving hit-and-run allegedly caused by Julio Cucul-Bol, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala.

The Department of Homeland Security said the goal of the operation was to “target criminal illegal aliens terrorizing Americans in sanctuary Illinois.”

“Millions of pounds of freight move on the highways every day for the Indiana State Police,” said Indiana State Police Secretary Anthony Scott. “This is not about immigration status alone. It’s about public safety. And 80,000-pound trucks in untrained hands are a dangerous thing.”

Concerns over issuing CDLs to illegal immigrants have intensified following a series of deadly crashes involving drivers who could not speak or read English or communicate with law enforcement.

One illegal immigrant truck driver accused of causing a crash in Florida that killed three people failed his CDL test 10 times in two months before finally receiving a license in 2023 in Washington state. Harjinder Singh, who allegedly crossed the southern border illegally in 2018, is accused of causing the August crash in Fort Pierce, Florida.

In California, an asylum seeker driving a semi-truck was involved in a crash earlier this month that killed three people.

“Indiana is the Crossroads of America, and that’s something we’re proud of — but it also means we must stay vigilant about those using our interstates for crime and thus endangering our communities,” Indiana Gov. Mike Braun said.

“The safety of our state is our top priority, and we’ll keep working with our federal partners to keep Hoosiers — and Americans — safe,” he added.

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“ICE launched operation Midway Blitz to remove illegal alien threats to public safety, which is exactly what we have done in Chicago. We recognized from the start that this must include protecting roadways carrying interstate traffic and cargo. Sanctuary policies like those in Illinois sadly don’t recognize borders, and ICE and the Indiana State Police have successfully arrested hundreds of illegal alien truck drivers who should not be operating on our highways,” said ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons.

“In recent weeks, we have seen illegal semi-truck drivers responsible for significant loss of life across the country. This was preventable, and that is precisely why we are working to ensure this doesn’t happen in Indiana or Illinois,” he added.

“Far too many innocent Americans have been killed by illegal aliens driving semi-trucks and big rigs. And yet, sanctuary states around the country have been issuing illegal aliens commercial driver’s licenses,” Noem said.

“The Trump Administration is ending the chaos,” she added.

Footage below:

More from Spectrum News:

Noem said Thursday that of the 3,000 total arrests so far through Operation Midway Blitz, many of the individuals had criminal records. She said an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who had been convicted of felony cruelty toward a child was also in possession of a fraudulent driver’s license and that an undocumented individual from Nicaragua was arrested for driving under the influence and transporting drugs.

“This is going to take a joint effort,” Braun said Thursday. “Every state is a border state when you’ve got to contend with stuff like this. Operation Midway Blitz is working to make our highways safer.”

The issue of foreign-born truck drivers first came to the fore in August, following a fatal crash in Florida involving India-born driver Harjinder Singh, who was using a commercial driver’s license issued in California. The California Department of Motor Vehicles told Spectrum News that its issuance of a non-domiciled license to Singh had followed all federal and state laws and that it confirmed Singh’s legal presence in the United States with the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system before issuing him a Real ID.

Since the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was established in 1937, the agency has required commercial vehicle drivers to be able to read and speak English well enough to converse with the public, understand highway traffic signs and signals and to respond to official inquiries. While inspectors have frequently cited drivers for violating the rule, the requirement that they be placed out of service had not been enforced since 2014.

That changed in May, when the Department of Transportation issued a new rule for truck drivers’ English proficiency. It cited safety concerns as the rationale for enforcement of a longstanding federal law that requires commercial truck drivers speak English to remain in operation. The rule called for commercial drivers who are not proficient in English to be removed from service beginning June 25.

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The DOT’s English language proficiency enforcement guidance stemmed from an executive order President Donald Trump signed in April to enact “commonsense rules for the road for America’s truck drivers.” The order directed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to rescind guidance developed during the Obama administration that allowed non-English-speaking commercial drivers to remain in service even if they violated a national regulation requiring English proficiency.

 

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